Forgive

Yes I have been told that holding a grudge hurts you more than the person you're holding the grudge against. And I have learned that we should forgive people in the same way we want to be forgiven. I truly do believe those things and I want to be forgiven. Yet it is so hard to really let things go.

First let's remind ourselves: your happiness level comes from you. Study after study has proven that a person's happiness has little correlation with how much power they have, or how much injustice have been done to them. I saw a news story about a lady whose home got blown up in Syria, yet now she is truly happy living in a refugee camp with an orphan baby she found injured in the streets. She's a good reminder for me that other people's mistakes aren't "making" me angry, unhappy or "making" me anything.

Although we hear it everywhere, it's still one of those lessons that's hard learned. Every parent will tell their own experience of hard-learning it to their children, and every child must learn it for themselves a hundred times before it finally registers as truth.

It's like how one day you grow up and realize that buying expensive chocolate really is worth it. There's years of eating those twice-as-big, dirt-cheap Easter "chocolate" bunnies until one day, as the flavorless wax coats your throat, you realize... this is not so good. This is not good at all.

Forgive selfishly if you must.

Forgive because you'd like to be one of those admirable people with extra patience and goodness to give, not one that has barely enough. Forgive so that you're the light in the situation and not the dark, and you can feel the difference. Forgive because your self-esteem need a boost. Forgive to prove to yourself that you're happy enough on your own and you don't need revenge. Forgive to end it on your terms. Forgive and then ask for no credit for the great thing you've done. Let it be the best thing you never bragged about. How wonderful, to be someone who can forgive. The happy kind of person that never buys crap chocolate and forgive easily.

Still. (A Bedtime Book for Adults)

By Brigitte Dale